Drop on demand inkjet technology for producing images on print media has been employed in products such as printers, multifunction devices, plotters, and facsimile machines. Generally, an inkjet image is formed by selectively ejecting ink droplets from a plurality of drop generators or inkjets, which are arranged in a printhead or a printhead array, onto an image receiving substrate. For example, the printhead array and the image receiving substrate may be moved relative to one other and the inkjets may be controlled to emit ink drops at appropriate times. The timing of the inkjet activation is performed by a printhead controller, which generates firing signals that activate the inkjets to eject ink. The image receiving substrate may be an intermediate image member, such as a print drum or belt, from which the ink image is later transferred to a print medium, such as paper. The image receiving substrate may also be a moving continuous web of print medium or sheets of a print medium onto which the ink drops are directly ejected. The ink ejected from the inkjets may be liquid ink, such as aqueous, solvent, oil based, UV curable ink, or the like, each of which may be stored in containers installed in the printer. Alternatively, the ink may be loaded in a solid or a gel form and delivered to a melting device, which heats the ink to generate liquid ink that is supplied to a printhead.
An inkjet printer may be configured to form printed images across a broad color spectrum; however, most inkjet printers form printed images with a predetermined and fixed number of distinct ink colors. For example, a full color ink jet printer may be configured to print color images with only four distinct ink colors; namely, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. If a print job requires an image to be printed with five or more colors of ink a different inkjet printer is utilized. Therefore, an inkjet printer having a configurable number of ink colors is desirable.
Additionally, known inkjet printers form printed images with a fixed print resolution for each ink color. The print resolution of an ink color refers to the number of ink drops ejected onto an image receiving substrate within a defined length. A maximum print resolution of an ink color in the cross process direction is a hardware characteristic that is determined by the total number of ink ejectors per unit length in the cross process direction of the printheads configured to eject the ink color. A print resolution of an ink color in the cross process direction may be reduced from the maximum print resolution with software that causes the inkjet printer to use fewer than all of the ink ejectors in a printhead to eject ink onto the image receiving substrate. The print resolution of an ink color may not, however, be increased above the maximum print resolution because additional ink ejectors cannot be added to known inkjet printing systems. Therefore, increased flexibility in the print resolution of inkjet printer is desirable.